How to Use SEO to Build Brand Awareness

When marketing online, one key factor that
helps your products get noticed by potential buyers is your brand.

Giant brands such as Nike, Coca-Cola, and
Apple, as well as new players such as Lyft, Blue Apron, and Snapchat, have
spent years and invested millions to establish a well-recognizable brand. This
is to ensure that they’re always considered in a customer’s buying journey.

Marketing teams of different brands all over the world are doing everything they can to raise awareness about their brands. They take advantage of tools and techniques to convey their story and make an impact on potential customers.

Every advertisement – whether offline or
online – is an effort to stick a message inside the minds of potential
customers.

However, throughout the years, consumers have
grown more conscious of the advertisements they see. People are now more
skeptical about advertisements. That’s why marketers are looking for more
organic means of advertising their products that seem natural for consumers.

This is where SEO shines the most. Using SEO to build brand awareness might just be the wisest technique that will provide your brand boost it needs.

Here is a list of tips to help you increase brand awareness and maximize SEO’s potential for your business.

How to Use SEO to Build Brand Awareness?

1. Check Your Data

One of the most compelling characteristics of
SEO is that it’s heavily based on performance metrics. By simply keeping close
track of your website performance analytics, you can easily pinpoint areas that
you need to improve on.

Make sure to analyze your SEO data first to
prevent your campaigns from becoming subjective.

For years, marketers have heavily relied on
focus groups, research, and customer sentiments that are usually subjective and
are easily influenced by biases. By carefully analyzing your website’s SEO
data, you can make insights on how your target market’s preferences are
evolving. This can help you make informed decisions regarding which keywords to
use and how much budget to allocate on each campaign.

2. Optimize Your Page Title and Meta Description

As you undertake SEO campaigns to increase
your brand’s awareness to rank higher and relevant search keywords for your
business, don’t forget to have a hard look at your website first.

The content of your website is heavily used by
search engines to reflect search results. Its page titles and meta descriptions
play an important role to rank in SERPs and capture your potential customers’
attention.

Page titles and meta descriptions are prime
real-estate that should feature the keywords you are targeting. It’s also the
first aspect to look at when composing strong copy that will resonate with your
target audience. If you’re looking to integrate brand keywords, it should be
written together with the primary keywords you’re targeting in such a way that
can be easily understood by users.

While most search engines don’t take meta
keywords in their ranking algorithm considerations, this is where users get a
glimpse of what your webpage is about. It’s important to create meta
descriptions that are both informative and captivating, even when it means
leaving your branded keywords out due to text limitations.

3. Improve Your User Experience

While some SEO marketers argue the correlation
between UX and SEO, having a pleasing user interface that creates fluid user
experience is vital for brand awareness and SEO.

Your website can sometimes be the primary
touchpoint that connects your business with your customers. This means that in
order to create a good impression with your customers, your website should make
a positive impression on every visit.

If you’re not aware, most search engines’
algorithms keep track of how much time a visitor spends on a website to determine
its authority and ranking. This means that if your website isn’t user-friendly,
visitors are more likely to leave in an instant, which could subsequently
reflect on your SEO ranking.

In order to keep your website’s UX in check,
keep these three factors in check at all times:

Responsiveness

Site speed

Navigation

4. Choose Your Social Media Platform

Nowadays, social media is an indispensable
tool to market your products and build awareness for your brand.

Aside from being a great source of referral traffic, social media also plays a vital role in SEO. Because social media has also been factored into search rank algorithms, being present in social media has become a key component in creating a holistic digital approach to brand awareness.

Even if some industry experts continuously
cast confusion on the importance of social media platforms in SEO, plenty of
marketers still consider social media as a vital component of SEO.

Moreover, you can find thousands of users
looking for products and services in social media. All you have to do is find
them and provide the right information in order for them to consider you in
their buying journey.

In fact, due to the sheer number of people using and interacting in social media platforms, they can even be considered search engines in their own merit. People aren’t just searching for information on Google. Most are already using Facebook and Twitter to find trends, products, services, news articles, and videos. This is why SEO marketers use social media for better search rankings.

5. Leverage Customer Retargeting

Repeat website traffic has more weight in website ranking metrics than just an increase in website traffic. This is why a customer retargeting campaign is very crucial for SEO and brand awareness.

Aside from lowering advertising costs,
customer retargeting is also usually more effective in customer engagement that
could eventually help increase sales conversions.

It’s a valuable digital marketing technique
that ensures new visitors are constantly engaged, making them more inclined to
visit your website once they are ready to make a purchase.

However, customer retargeting requires active
management in order to keep certain variables in constant check. Despite this,
its yields are just too good to pass up.

6. Monitor Brand Mentions

Nowadays, a negative viral story is every
brand’s nightmare. Complaints in social media can easily gain traction, which
can then be picked up by online news sites. Once this happens, it could
negatively impact your brand reputation as well as your SEO ranking.

To avoid this from happening, make sure you
have monitoring measures in place. The easiest way to do this is by creating
Google Alerts whenever your brand name appears online. This way, you can reach
a customer and resolve their concerns even before their story blows out of
control.

Use These Tips for Better Brand
Awareness

SEO has undeniably become an effective tool to increase brand awareness and elevate your business. Keep this SEO checklist at hand as you use SEO in building your brand’s awareness among your target audience.

John Vuong is the sole owner of Local SEO Search, Inc. John’s mission is to help local business owners improve their online influence so they can dominate their industry. With his business acumen and innate understanding of the local business landscape, John writes blogs that delve on how to customize SEO campaigns based on client needs.